Texas governor vetoes hemp ban bill
Texas governor vetoes hemp ban bill
https://www.politico.com/news/2025/06/23/texas-governor-vetoes-hemp-ban-bill-00418149
Tag: drugs
The Chaotic Personal Life of Elon Musk
Musk has been taking drugs.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lfDxO5Bg6jI
By Trump’s Logic, Biden Deserves Credit for a Dramatic Drop in Overdose Deaths
“When it became clear that overdoses had risen dramatically in 2020, experts surmised that it had something to do with the social and economic disruption caused by the COVID-19 pandemic and the government’s response to it—an impression confirmed by subsequent research.
A 2024 study found that “volatile drug use during the COVID-19 pandemic was common, appeared to be driven by structural vulnerability, and was associated with increased overdose risk.” Another study published the same year concluded that “policies limiting in-person activities significantly increased” drug death rates.
If pandemic-related disruption drove the 2020 overdose spike, the return to normal life seems like a plausible explanation for subsequent decreases, although the death toll was still about 14 percent higher last year than it was in 2019. Last fall, University of North Carolina drug researcher Nabarun Dasgupta and his colleagues suggested other possible factors, including wider availability of naloxone, an opioid antagonist that quickly reverses overdoses.”
https://reason.com/2025/05/21/by-trumps-logic-biden-deserves-credit-for-a-dramatic-drop-in-overdose-deaths/
A New Survey Suggests Illicit Opioid Use Is Much More Common Than the Government’s Numbers Indicate
“A new survey of American adults suggests that illicit opioid use in the United States is much more common than the government’s numbers indicate. In the survey, conducted via the online platform Respondi in June 2024, 7.5 percent of respondents reported they had used (or might have used) illicitly manufactured fentanyl (IMF) in the previous 12 months, 25 times the rate suggested by the government-sponsored National Survey on Drug Use and Health (NSDUH).”
https://reason.com/2025/05/09/a-new-survey-suggests-illicit-opioid-use-is-much-more-common-than-the-governments-numbers-indicate/
Trump Called Price Controls ‘Communist.’ Now He’s Ordering Them for Prescription Drugs.
“If enacted across the board, Trump’s order would mean pharmaceutical companies must sell drugs to Americans at the lowest prices they were offering anybody else in the world.”
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“Americans do pay significantly more for prescription drugs than people in other developed nations, but the reasons for that are more complicated than Trump suggests.
“There are many good reasons why we should pay more for earlier access to new medications than our trading partners,” wrote Darius Lakdawalla and Dana Goldman of the University of Southern California’s Schaeffer Institute for Public Policy & Government Service. “As the world’s largest market for pharmaceuticals, America finds itself in the unique position of accruing the lion’s share of the benefits from new medicines. We often recoup these additional costs in the form of longer and healthier lives.””
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“”facing a choice between deep cuts in their U.S. pricing or the loss of weakly profitable overseas markets,” the companies may simply exit foreign markets altogether, “leaving U.S. consumers with the same prices, pharmaceutical manufacturers with lower profits, and future generations with less innovation.””
https://reason.com/2025/05/13/trump-called-price-controls-communist-now-hes-ordering-them-for-prescription-drugs/
Pam Bondi’s Absurd Claim About Fentanyl Overdoses Epitomizes the Illogic of the War on Drugs
“Bondi’s most obvious mistake is equating potential overdoses with actual overdoses: She assumes that 258 million opioid-naive people would each have consumed two milligrams of fentanyl in one sitting. But Bondi also erroneously assumes that seizing 3,400 kilograms of fentanyl is the same as reducing U.S. fentanyl consumption by that amount.
That is obviously not true. Prohibition allows drug traffickers to earn a hefty risk premium, which gives them a strong incentive to find ways around any barriers the government manages to erect. Given all the places where drugs can be produced and all the ways they can be smuggled, it is not possible to “cut off the flow,” as politicians have been vainly promising to do for more than a century. The most they can realistically hope to accomplish through interdiction is higher retail prices resulting from increased costs imposed on drug traffickers.
That strategy is complicated by the fact that illegal drugs acquire most of their value close to the consumer. The cost of replacing destroyed crops and seized shipments is therefore relatively small, a tiny fraction of the “street value” trumpeted by law enforcement agencies. As you get closer to the retail level, the replacement cost rises, but the amount that can be seized at one time falls.
These challenges—which are compounded in the case of fentanyl, a highly potent drug that can be transported or shipped in small packages containing many doses—explain why interdiction never seems to have a significant and lasting impact on retail prices. From 1981 to 2012, according to the Office of National Drug Control Policy, the average, inflation-adjusted retail price for a pure gram of heroin fell by 86 percent. During the same period, the average retail price for cocaine and methamphetamine fell by 75 percent and 72 percent, respectively. In 2021, the Drug Enforcement Administration reported that methamphetamine’s “purity and potency remain high while prices remain low,” that “availability of cocaine throughout the United States remains steady,” and that “availability and use of cheap and highly potent fentanyl has increased.””
https://reason.com/2025/05/02/pam-bondis-absurd-claim-about-fentanyl-overdoses-epitomizes-the-illogic-of-the-war-on-drugs/
A New Study Adds to the Evidence That Drug Busts Result in More Overdose Deaths
“The study included 2,653 drug seizures and 1,833 opioid-related deaths from 2020 to 2023. “Within the surrounding 100, 250, and 500 meters,” RTI International researcher Alex H. Kral and his two co-authors reported in JAMA Network Open on Wednesday, “drug seizures were associated with a statistically significant increase in the relative risk for fatal opioid overdoses.””
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“Prohibition makes drug use more dangerous by creating a black market in which quality and potency are highly variable and unpredictable. Ramped-up enforcement of prohibition magnifies that problem, as dramatically demonstrated by the deadly impact of restricting access to pain medication at the same time that illicit fentanyl was proliferating as a heroin booster and substitute.”
https://reason.com/2025/03/20/a-new-study-adds-to-the-evidence-that-drug-busts-result-in-more-overdose-deaths/
Trump says pharma tariffs will entice back drug production. They won’t.
“the cost of site construction might rise further because of the 25 percent tariff Trump has imposed on steel, a major input in industrial construction”
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““The same concern applies to manufacturing equipment, which is all stainless steel,””
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“What actually encourages companies to move — as Trump alluded to when he called out Dublin — isn’t tariffs, said Ned Hux, a pharmaceutical and life sciences tax partner at PwC.
“Targeted tax incentives, streamlined regulatory approvals, and prioritized government procurement could make U.S.-based production more attractive and competitive,” he said, adding those measures could come in the form of tax deductions, lower tax rates on manufacturing activity, tax credits and low-interest financing for domestic production.”
https://www.politico.eu/article/us-donald-trump-pharma-tariffs-drug-production/
The FDA fired its tobacco enforcers. Now it wants them back.
“The Food and Drug Administration earlier this month fired dozens of staffers responsible for going after retailers who illegally sell tobacco to minors.
Now it’s begging them to come back.
Senior FDA officials asked laid-off employees in recent days to temporarily return after mass cuts decimated the agency’s ability to penalize retailers that sell cigarettes and vapes to minors, four federal health officials familiar with the matter said.”
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“Without aggressive federal oversight, stores would face far less incentive to turn away underage buyers. That could open the door to a reversal in youth tobacco use rates, experts said, undercutting the fight against chronic disease that Kennedy has vowed to make the centerpiece of his agenda. The civil penalties office also served as a key tool in combating growing sales of illicit vapes.
People who smoke cigarettes, use e-cigarettes or other tobacco products primarily begin before they turn 18, research shows, elevating their risk for a range of chronic diseases like lung cancer and heart disease.”
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“It remains unclear why HHS gutted the office focused on civil penalties, which is known within FDA’s tobacco enforcement apparatus as the Division of Business Operations. The Center for Tobacco Products is funded entirely by user fees paid by industry, meaning the terminations won’t create any taxpayer savings. Instead, officials said, it may end up costing money; the fines that the FDA collects from retailers are funneled directly to the federal treasury.
Kennedy, who has singled out smoking as particularly detrimental to Americans’ health, argued in a recent CBS News interview that all the jobs eliminated across HHS were either administrative or deemed redundant.
“In some cases, we cut programs, but we only did that when we consolidated them into another program,” he said. “So the task will continue, their mission will continue. The people are still there for the most part.”
Yet within the FDA, the officials said the cuts effectively collapsed its tobacco enforcement operation.”
https://www.politico.com/news/2025/04/14/fda-fired-tobacco-enforcers-asked-return-00289985
Trump Praised His A.G. Pick for Reducing Opioid Overdoses. In Reality, Drug Deaths Surged Under Her Watch.
“When President Donald Trump announced his nomination of Pam Bondi as attorney general, he extolled her “incredible job” in “work[ing] to stop the trafficking of deadly drugs and reduc[ing] the tragedy of Fentanyl Overdose Deaths.” Yet those deaths exploded on Bondi’s watch as Florida’s attorney general.”
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“Bondi’s fans praised her for cracking down on “pill mills,” which may have made it harder for nonmedical drug consumers (as well as bona fide patients) to obtain prescription opioids such as hydrocodone and oxycodone. But the result was increased consumption of black market alternatives, which are much more dangerous because their quality and potency are highly variable and unpredictable. That hazard was magnified by the simultaneous proliferation of illicit fentanyl as a heroin booster and substitute—a development that likewise was driven by prohibition, which favors more potent drugs that are easier to conceal and smuggle.”
https://reason.com/2025/02/03/florida-drug-deaths-surged-on-pam-bondis-watch/